American Ag Today- 10/25/24

And welcome into a brand new episode of American Ag Today produced by the American Ag Radio Network. Good to have you join us. I'm your host Jesse Allen. Well, joining us now on the program, a new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign looks at pollination contracts between beekeepers and California almond growers looking at some of the clauses that could make the agreements more appealing for both parties. Some interesting

interesting things going on here. Let's talk about this, joining us for a conversation, Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Brittany Goodrich is with us here today. And Brittany, thanks for the time. Appreciate you joining us. Hope you're doing well.

Yeah, I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. So give us a rundown and kind of a background on this new research. I found this fascinating as I started to read into it a little bit and look at it to kind of the relationship here between beekeepers and the almond growing industry. So give us just to start kind of the top line what you found.

Yeah, so many people don't really realize that this huge pollination event happens every year. And so over 90% of the honey bee colonies in the whole United States actually trek to California starting about this time of the year to get there by about February 15th to pollinate almonds.

And so every almond tree requires about two honey beehives, well, not every almond tree, but every almond acre requires two honey beehives. So that means beekeepers from all over the US are shipping colonies on semi trucks out to California for almond pollination every year.

And so this is a huge deal for not only almond growers, but also commercial beekeepers in the U.S. And it's roughly three weeks out of their gear brings in over half of their revenues.

for the year because fees are so large. So these contracts between beekeepers and almond growers are quite lucrative. Almond growers are looking to cut costs wherever they can while beekeepers really need to make enough money to keep their operations going. So that's where the idea from this research came is how can we make these mutually beneficial improvements in their pollination contracts?

very interesting stuff that something i was on aware of to be quite honest and i i think about this uh... in in terms of improving some of these contracts etcetera etcetera i know when you think about native bee populations

They can be threatened by a multitude of things, pesticide use, diseases, et cetera, et cetera. And I have that maybe some of the movement of some of these bee colonies around the country at different times of the year could maybe have an impact on that as well. I mean, talk about some of those things for us. Yeah. So certainly moving, moving colonies around is, is honestly, it's a cost of doing business for these commercial beekeepers. They usually have a rule of thumb of

You know how many colonies they think are going to die when they simply have to move them from one place to the other. So it can be quite stressful and then every time.

You know, a commercial beekeeper puts their colonies in an agricultural area. They sort of account for another cost of doing business, which is that there's usually pesticides in these, you know, almond orchards or other agricultural areas that these honey bee colonies are in. And so again,

You know, they sort of know that pesticide exposure is going to be something that might affect their colonies from being placed in these pollination contracts. So that's actually one of the aspects that I looked at is how much beekeepers actually valued these additional pesticide protections that women growers can implement.

that will reduce the likelihood that they're exposed to these pesticides. And beekeepers, that was the highest valued contract clause by far, and they were willing to accept about a 4% discount on their pollination fee to have that additional pesticide protection. So there's a lot of different things.

going on in the bee realm. And so there's different things beekeepers and growers can do to sort of protect them from these various risks. Well, there are any other big things that beekeepers also valued. You mentioned one there with some of those discounts for pesticide protection. Were there any other things you found in your research that they kind of valued?

Yeah, so the second most valuable clause was actually if almond growers planted some beef-friendly cover crops in their almond orchards. And why that's important, almonds bloom in mid-February when virtually nothing else is blooming, even in California. And so almond growers can plant some specific beef-friendly cover crop mixes.

that have like some different brassicas, so like mustards and canola, that will actually start blooming a little before almonds start to bloom. And so what that provides is this additional nutrition source for the B colonies that's hugely valuable for multiple reasons.

But there have been studies that have shown that bees with improved nutrition are actually more resilient against pesticide exposure. So you can imagine you're feeding the bees this other type of

of nutritious pollen. It's making them healthier and making them better able to handle diseases, pesticide, some of these other factors that are making bees die off. And so, yeah, these bee-friendly cover crops are something that beekeepers really valued as well. And they were willing to accept a discount of about 3%.

For a grower who actually planted these beef friendly cover crops. One of folks could take a look at the full research and work that you have done here looking at honeybees and almond growers and their contracts and more. It's on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's College of Agricultural Consumer and Environmental Sciences website, aces.illinois.edu. It's under the news section.

We'll post the link up as well on our website for more information at americanagnetwork.com. With that, we appreciate the time. Dr. Brittany Goodrich with the University of Illinois Urbando Champagne. Thanks for joining us here today on the program. We appreciate it. Yeah, thank you.

Once again, very interesting stuff. And I learned something today, looking at the beekeeping and almond growing industries and how they work together and those contracts and more that Dr. Goodrich was talking about. And again, find more details, aces.illinois.edu under the news section. You could find that story. That's going to do it for this episode of American Ag Today, produced by the American Ag Radio Network. Thanks for joining us. I'm Jesse Allen. Have a great rest of your day.